Chapter 11, Heaven in the Handbook of Christian Apologetics
Is Heaven likely or unlikely or self-contradictory nonsense? It is too good to
be true for a start and it is mad to think you suffer and die here to go there
forever.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
We reject reincarnation because scripture opposes it Hebrews 9:27
Reason Says
So what?
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Tradition in the Churches never endorsed or permitted it
Reason says:
So what? Tradition endorsed influencing the state to
quash any views that differed from the dogma of the Church.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Reincarnation would mean that when Jesus when he became
man that it was just an appearance not a real becoming man
Reason says:
Jesus could have reincarnated time and time again to
develop the power to love so much that he managed to raise himself or be raised
from the dead.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Reincarnation implies that body and soul is not a unity or oneness but that the
soul is imprisoned in the body
Reason says:
It does not. Many believers in reincarnation believe they
chose their embodiment. Even if the body and the soul are not one they act like
it and that is all that counts.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Reincarnation implies that the body is worthless and a punishment and a trap
Reason says:
It does not. Spirits might need bodies despite the
frailties of the bodies to feel complete and happier.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Reincarnation usually blames sin on the body
Reason says:
If it does it usually then it doesn’t have to. It is possible that we reincarnate because we value ordinary human life and the body so much.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Reincarnation says we are reborn to learn the lessons we failed to learn in the
previous life but if that is so then why are our memories of previous lives
wiped?
Reason says:
We forget most things in life and lessons have to be relearned over and over again anyway. Christians can’t explain why we are so forgetful of the lessons we learned either. Maybe we forget because life is about having different experiences and variety – an adventure more than about learning lessons? Perhaps we don’t need to remember the most important lessons we got in a previous life because they are coded into our characters anyway? Is that why one child is kindly and another child is hard-hearted?
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
The evidence for reincarnation comes from past life
regress and telepathy or demons can explain where the information about past
lives comes from. It is a hoax.
Reason says:
Maybe telepathy made doctors diagnose a woman with some
incurable terminal disease that doesn’t go into remission so that when she went
to Lourdes and got cured nobody knew that there was nothing wrong with her at
all? Telepathy is invoked by the Church to explain miracles it doesn’t like and
it has the bigotry not to let us use it to explain its own.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Reincarnation cannot tell us why our souls are imprisoned in bodies
Reason says:
Many forms of it try to.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
To those who say Heaven is escapist we answer that is it
escapist that a child in the womb could wonder about life after birth?
Reason says:
Escapism is when you want to forget about the troubles of
this world and doing something about them and focus on a pie in the sky instead.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
To those who say that Heaven has nothing to do with life here now, we say that
the joy of Heaven begins on earth right now.
Reason says:
Nonsense.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
We deny that Heaven is a bribe. We deny that it requires
a mercenary doing of good on earth to get rewards there. Romeo wasn’t mercenary
for wanting to marry Juliet. A team that has worked hard is not doing wrong to
want victory.
Reason says:
It would be love for them not mercenary to seek victory.
The truly good person would want to stay on earth not go to Heaven. Why? To help
the poor and the suffering. Heaven is a cynical bribe. Heaven is not a victory
as regards the best in human nature.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
Heaven is unselfish for in the pleasure we feel and the happiness we have with
being one with God we forget ourselves.
So do we forget the pleasure and the happiness? As long as we have them we are
not forgetting ourselves.
To be in Heaven and not have any work to do is inhuman but we answer that the
work we do in Heaven is simply love. Love is a work.
Reason replies:
There is no suffering in Heaven to heal. There is no love
without being a being who can suffer for others.
We do not sin in Heaven. To argue that we need to be free
to sin in order not to be some kind of animal that is guided by instinct which it mistakes for freedom is mistaken. We do not need free will to be better than the dog which thinks it is free just like we do except we admit it is not. It is as silly as speaking of a healthy disease!
Why? Because sin takes away freedom. The truly free person doesn’t sin for he
reaches his perfection and happiness. God gives us free will only in the desire
that we will choose a higher freedom, freedom from evil which enslaves and
tricks us. Evil always treats us like objects and robots though it tricks us to
think that it make us even freer. The lower freedom is freedom from compulsion
and the higher freedom is freedom from evil. In Heaven nobody is compelled to be
good but nobody wants to sin there so they have the higher freedom, freedom from
evil.
So by not taking us to heaven from the first moment of our existence then God has cheated us. He is to blame for our sins and if he had done this there would be nobody choosing to go to Hell. Hell is as more his fault than ours.
Religion sells Heaven as a moral option to spend eternal moral happiness with an eternal moral God. How does the claim that morality and God have to go together connect to the idea of an afterlife that is meant to be spent with a moral God in a moral eternity? The idea is that God will want only good deeds and love in his heaven otherwise you are not truly with him.
Looks good until you think!
People hope that the good deeds they do on earth will do and they can spend
Heaven in bliss with nothing to do. That is what the logic above amounts to. In
Heaven even if you do anything it is not the same as crying and bleeding and
endangering yourself on earth to carry food to the starving. So good is a ladder
to Heaven that you just throw away when you get there.
If that is your attitude facing God as your judge you will not get into Heaven
for whoever does good as a ladder that he hopes to break up for firewood is a
hypocrite and an opportunist. There is no real good in him.
If there is an afterlife like that then it is an immoral one. If there is no
afterlife of that kind then it is morally harmful to say there is. You have
people using a ladder that they will break and end up having nowhere decent to
go.
Is it harmful to say there is such a Heaven it if you wrongly think there is?
Yes for harm causing is not prevented or annulled or softened by good
intentions. You have an arrogant opinion of your good intentions and their
values if you disagree.
Handbook of Christian Apologetics Says
There will be no marrying in Heaven. Will there be sex there? Sexuality will
exist in Heaven for we will still be men and women in Heaven. Sex is not what we
do but what we are. But in Heaven we will be past the copulating stage and
instead will be united in some kind of spiritual intercourse in Heaven with
everybody else, something that is foreshadowed by sexual intercourse on earth.
So Heaven has sex not in the physical sense though we will have physical bodies
there but everybody will be part of an ineffable oneness and intimacy far closer
and more pleasurable than any sex on earth.
Reason says:
What is this? An endless orgasm in Heaven? This is an incredible doctrine coming
from Catholic philosophers! Jesus said there would be no marrying in Heaven but
that everybody would be like the angels. That doesn’t sound like there will be
any kind of sex, our type or other, there. Angels don’t have bodies. Also if the
union in heaven is closer than marriage then it is marriage so we are married to
everybody else!
Christian tradition is adamant that there will be no sexuality in Heaven for sex
is a necessary evil on earth.
